Free
by auri mynonys
Summary: Grima lets his beloved go.


I have loved as few will ever love in all the history of the world. And yet, my love has brought me nothing. Why?

Every day. Every day since I saw your face, I have loved you. I have called, I have begged, I have needed you beside me; yet you have never been there. You have never returned my love. And for this, I have cried. I have wept, silently, in my bed, alone.

I will wish for a thousand years; I will cry a thousand tears; but you will never love me.

I saw you first, riding free upon a white horse. Both of you rejoiced, untamed and wild, as the wind blew past you. You thought you were flying, didn't you? I thought you were. And in my heart, I wanted to be flying with you, soaring through the air as freely as you were doing at that very moment. Yet my heavy soul could not take wing; I could only watch you, rising and circling through the air above my head. And in my heart, I wept.

Again I saw you in your Uncle's hall, a Lady both beautiful and proud, and I longed all the more for you, seeing you in your seat by your brother, quashing your own wildness in the hopes of appearing more demure. But I knew you felt caged; I knew you wanted to fly again, and I swore I would help you fly someday, and that I would join you, so high in the air.

There was no choice, then, when the wizard came to me. You were offered without any pretense, without any hesitation, to be my soul mate, my lover, my wife - all of your unbridled energy my own to cherish, your freedom mine to give you. And you expected me to refuse, didn't you? You assumed I was the type of man who would reject such temptation. You were wrong.

None have ever loved me, least of all you; yet yours is the heart I have held in highest esteem for so long. I could not turn down the offer of your heart - of your love - as mine forevermore. If only, my precious... if only...

Don't think I don't regret my mistake; I do, and I did, every day after I agreed. My own treachery weighed upon my soul like lead. Every night I wept and cursed my own idiocy - for I saw, as I destroyed your Uncle, as I destroyed your family, as I destroyed your country - that I was destroying you as well. And your deterioration was by far the worst thing I suffered through that period; watching your tears, hearing you cry out in your sleep for salvation, knowing you felt more caged than ever before, caused me more anguish than I can ever put into words. I begged the wizard to end your agony, to allow me some other duty; yet he said my chance would come, that soon, so very, very soon, I could change your melancholy state to one of joy; that this was why you were my prize, was it not - so that I could heal your broken wings and let you free to fly again?

And so I continued my web of lies, despite my own heart's foreboding of ill, and I cried to see your pain worsen. Over and over, I told myself, _This will end. You will save her, you will ease her suffering, when all is said and done._ But you did not understand my thought - not that I expected you to - and you rejected me despite my good intentions.

Ah, my lady, you deem yourself a kind woman; yet your cruelty stung my soul like the bite of steel to my skin. Rejection after rejection was all you gave in return to any love I ever showed you - what little you would allow me - and still I clung to you, as might be expected.

I can't cling to you anymore, now that you are lost; I am on my own, deceived, lost, ruined. I can save myself if I try, but I do not know how to go on without you. No one could ask me to live without you in my heart; no one could take you away from me should they try.

I drowned in your beauty when I saw you that first time on the plains, riding wild upon your glowing white horse. My doom was sealed then; there was no turning back, no turning from the light to seek my own shadowy corner where I belonged.

If I could have left you then, I would have; if I could have stopped my heart from loving you, none of this would have happened. The day I saw you first, I knew that I had just dived into a pond that was over my head, with no way of escaping, no one to rescue me but you. I was lost.

And what then, my princess? What, then, could you have done to save me? I could simply say that you should have loved me; but what use is that? I cannot turn your heart, nor can you turn mine; not even the wizard could have changed your cold regard for me to what I so desired it to be. And I would not want you to love me because you had no choice, because it had been forced on you, and this was the very difficulty with which I struggled every day. How was Saruman to convince you to love me when nothing I could do had the power to persuade you to even like me just a little?

I knew he would force you to love me by some potion or spell, but I would not confess it, not to me, not to you, not to anyone in the world. For how could I admit to that, when my heart so longed to deny it?

Oh, my fair one, would that things had been different! Would that I had been born fairer of face, or at the very least more worthy of your beauty and your magnificent soul; but there are others on the path of your life who will care for you better than I. I know this, though it wounds my heart to even think of you as another man's; but I, my dear, I love you, and as such I cannot see you unhappy.

I am, therefore, releasing you. There is another who captivates your heart; one from Minas Tirith, as I understand. And though I never held much sway on your actions, I have at least a little hold. Yet this I will not use to my advantage; instead, I will let you choose with whom you will end your days.

Go then, my love, and be free.


End file.
